coming up on our team more protests over the police shooting of a teen in brooklyn r t is in the community as residents demand justice for the sixteen year old who was gunned down by a barrage of bullets. a prominent reuters journalist has been indicted by the u.s. justice department accused of helping anonymous gain access to a media conglomerate servers will look at this case and the possible jail time the journalist could face and it's a place where the u.s. government sends those deemed on trial level hold so-called enemy combatants now there's word of a hunger strike at the facility in cuba look at why the tape detainees are refusing to eat. it's friday march fifteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm not going lopez and you're watching r t starting off this hour after three

consecutive nights where clashes and chaos plagued the streets of brooklyn a relative sense of calm has swept over the borough possibly due to poor weather conditions for. the. police say no one was arrested last night during a candlelight vigil held for the four kalani gray but that's not to say that the night was without trouble community members who attended the vigil squared off with members of occupy wall street the two groups had dueling messages for the n.y.p.d. that oftentimes drown one another out a number of community protesters also showed up at the press conference held by city councilman jimmy williams and once again express their anger against the city . but. there was there every day i believe to be quite. right what. my the people that put

my i am what i still have a discussion of the security that there was about the discover that are to correspondent on a stasi a choker now was out in the streets of brooklyn until late last night covering the protests she brings us this report. that. last saturday sixteen year old kimani gray was killed by police shot four times in the front and three in the back. the n.y.p.d. claimed the team had pointed a gun at them however this remains uncertain that there was a weapon that no one saw and not his friends his family didn't know he had a weapon and there were a lot of witnesses. who were able to see it that this individual this child didn't have a weapon on him as these candles burn in memory of yet another killed youth an entire community rises up night after night to demand justice and an end to police brutality for three nights in a row few turned chaotic clashes broke out. leaving one officer hospitalized

after reportedly being injured with a brick a total of forty six arrests were made wednesday. but no violence erupted thursday night tensions however still ran high. i mean this is. you know. this is like another country a lot of people are just tired of the period with solutions to stop the violence nowhere in sight deeply seated issues between the police and the community remain unaddressed leaving many worried children parents. honest i see churkin our party new york. well the deputy social media editor of reuters is facing some serious problems this week the justice department says twenty six year old matthew keys conspired with members of the hacktivist group anonymous to break down and to break into computers of his former employer he is

was the web producer of the local fox forty station in sacramento when he was fired back in two thousand and ten the indictment filed against keyes says that he provided hackers with the long and password information to fox forty is parent company that tribune's master network one of the headlines on the l a times web site was changed as a result so essentially this is an act of digital vandalism he's now faces three criminal counts and that could land him in prison for ten years with more than seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in fines are to repartees there and your blake has been following this case and he joins me now with more andrew there's a lot of confusion surrounding this case can you break it down for us a little bit more you know as you know this case has actually been going this investigation going on for a really long time we only really found out about everything yesterday so backing up a little bit i mean you seem to cover all the bases pretty well but keyes was fired from his job at this small time fox affiliate in sacramento back in late two thousand and ten and after he left there supposedly two months later he logged on

to a chap room that was frequented by members of anonymous and and some point whether he was in that chat room once or twice or whatever he handed out the log in credentials username and password so that someone could just log on to a company computer and take a look around so what are not happening at least what we've been told is happening and nothing more than this was that someone changed a story on the l.a. times website for around thirty minutes and so under the computer fraud and abuse act he is now looking at upwards of a few decades and three quarters of a million dollars in fines because someone who wasn't supposed to access the authorized computer system did and so his his attorneys are saying that he's. not guilty to the charges and it's going to be a really really interesting case because here's a person who who is affiliated themselves with this group anonymous and it means not some leak computer hacker or anything or just some dorky journalist to seem

like he was trying to fit in trying to cause him trouble maybe trying to seek revenge on his former employers maybe just trying to make some cool internet friends well that's what i was going to ask you and i mean we've all had those jerry maguire kind of moments or thoughts where we've thought about doing something really crazy against our bosses to extract revenge for something that they have done for making our lives miserable was this a case of just extracting revenge or is there is there something more to it will it depends on if anonymous did any more with this information i mean they already say that they gave access he gave access to the group and therefore open up the doors and that's enough to charge him with everything that has already been indicted for you know that that's right there but you know did anonymous do anything else could they have done anything else and also why why exactly was on this anonymous disinterested one really interesting aspect here is right when keyes was hired by reuters in early two thousand and twelve his first story for them actually was a profile of the group anonymous and he started talking about how he went into the group and he befriended them and he thought that the alleged ringleader actually

confided in him and trusted him and he wrote a profile of him right after it was revealed that this fellow was actually working for the f.b.i. so from what we know this. month so you're the ringleader of the you not in this offshoot lulz sec he was arrested in two thousand and eleven started cooperating with the feds that summer and in march two thousand and twelve his identity was finally revealed when jeremy him in baird brown and a bunch of other activists had their homes raided some of them were arrested and that's when this whole anonymous thing really started falling apart depending on which way you look at it and it was that the interesting thing here though is he was cooperating with this fellow named sabu who was cooperated with the f.b.i. and. that's what we're being told was the f.b.i. fishing for information do we think that this fellow was actually you know set up by the f.b.i. there's a lot of really interesting questions it fits into many pieces of the puzzle here not only did reuters hire someone who maybe they shouldn't have but also was the

government trying to to set up anonymous there or set up someone try to bring down a journalist like there's a lot of late really weird questions here a lot of bizarre little twists and turns and we only have a short time left but i have to ask you how do we know for sure is there a way for the prosecution to prove that anonymous didn't happen to it that they walked into it with the information that this person gave is there any is there any indication of how it actually happened or to say definitively that the information that he gave links them to the web site well when when he was profiled anonymous in two thousand and twelve we saw with reuters he actually included screen shots of the chat room conversations that he was having at the time now ones where he allegedly handed out usernames and passwords all user name and password but just you know what's what's happened and was just you know trying to have some fun with these guys so if you did hand over the information that's that's that was said and done right right there but what it's going to come down to is what else happened inside these computers networks did anonymous actually try to infiltrate try to

compromise any other data was just one single security breach which in my opinion isn't worth three quarters a million dollars worth of fines but regardless it's going to be something i think as as it develops are going to hear more more about this case and it's going to get more and more confusing so i'll have to put those pieces together all very confusing we can trust that you'll be sticking with the developments of this r t well producer and you're like. last month we told you about the federal charges that were brought up against former blackwater officials charges that accuse the group of conspiring to hide the purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the government now of the five former blackwater officials former general counsel andrew howell former procurement vice president and a bundy and former weapons manager ronald sleeze act walked away scot free meanwhile former president gary jackson and former executive vice president william matthews pled guilty to some misdemeanor charges they were sentenced to four months of house arrest three years of probation and

a five thousand dollars fine with new information is emerging showing that just how tight the relations are between this private security contractor in the cia it was after all the argument defense attorneys use to excuse the group's behavior to the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms but is this a valid excuse to write off a group's legal for chairman of weapons to discuss michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq joins me now thank you for joining me so how close are these relations were these relations between blackwater and the cia. we probably will never know but the the the the whole trial that collapsed a month ago just where all those raise more questions and that's what i got you know the the the fact is you know governor i'm very very familiar with government procurement now of course the cia does a lot of stuff black stuff that. you know it is unique i've never done contracting

with or for well for the cia but i am familiar with government contracting in the whole thing about it is if blackwater. is saying that we were we were working for the cia they've got to have something to back it up verbal doesn't fly if they say you know if there's a verbal agreement that doesn't hold water maybe they have one but it's not going to good enough to defend them if they had some kind of agreement there should have been something in writing that between procurement the cia because the cia has contracted officers the procure for goods and services just like any other federal agency so it would seem to me that they would have had some something in writing that if they're providing all the southern information redacted could documents and stuff like that they would have had some kind of contracts roll. contract paperwork to provide as part of their defense the news stated that a couple of very high ranking cia officials spoke on their you know in

a document wrote on their behalf. probably trying to help them help their defense but the thing that really would have defended them and were backed up their argument would have said well where's the contracted you know where's the document that says you were under contract to the cia that was of course after the fact not not before so let me ask you this first of all should it be that surprising that they did have these close ties allegedly and also do you think that that did newly branded a category has these kind of close ties with the cia well they probably do it's probably not a unique arrangement the see. has all sorts of people under contract it's incredible the number of contractors that work for the federal government but one of the things that i read in one of the articles was that their claim is that the. former congressman hawks said well we needed the cia needed blackwater at the time that was in its name at the time because they didn't have the resources to do the job themselves that that's really the main problem the problem is why doesn't

the cia have the resources or the operatives that have the experience and the know how and all that to do the job we're outsourcing to civilians to be operatives for the cia it just sounds kind of in the same things happening in the military with companies like blackwater were outsourcing soldiers the job of soldiers so the problem is that the government is outsourcing for everything in this particular case if black bloc war story is to be believed they were outsourcing to blackwater to do all sorts of stuff and they got caught and it's surprising that they are said that they don't have the resources considering just how much of our budget actually goes to the department of defense and others let me ask you this does the fact that these two had close relations excuse the fact that they were possibly buying these these guns under without a firearm tobacco and alcohol actually knowing well you know if that's

a tough one you know who the heck knows they probably it seems to me is just my personal opinion it seems to me that you know blackwater is kind of a rogue a rogue outfit to do all sorts of stuff needed probably crossing the line on a search on a lot of stuff the the actual i mean a handful of weapons you know three pistols given to the prince of duel of jordan i mean in the scale of things it's not a lot it's it's like our interview when when i was here last month you know a sign of kind of like a slap on the wrist like the government wanted. they have to have something to go after blackwater on but i really think it's just the tip of the iceberg i just think there are so many things that the massacre in baghdad you know the nisser square massacre in september of zero seven dwarfs this thing this raid in north carolina i mean that's the big enchilada right there and let me quickly ask you we have a very short amount i want but it's important to note that not it's not just americans that work within these companies private come to contractors like academy have

employers around the world and it's not just coalition allies so how can we hold these people accountable or can we well here's the thing it says in this one article that i read erik prince you know is just involved he but everything he does is for other countries all that erik prince is doing right now is contracting out for services security services and all that mercenary services to other countries so again i think the big question with blackwater z. now cold academy is is it is it ok for an american and an american firm. under another name or whatever to be contracting out mercenary services to foreign countries i think that's the big question when it comes to academy z. blackwater and all these others that are run by americans were or actually american firms and i have a feeling we're not going to get the answer to that question anytime soon any time soon michael o'brian author of america's failure in iraq thank you so much for

joining me thanks for having me. with no other way to force one tunnel bay officials to hear their pleas for justice over one hundred detainees are putting their lives on the line with a massive hunger strike their protest is now in its fifth week and many are saying it's a do or die type of hunger strike it started when guards were confiscating the detainees personal belongings including their own personal korans one new york city based lawyer who is representing him many detainees all behind me says her client has lost at least twenty pounds since the strike began for the latest developments coming out of cuba and the official response part d.c. q bride joins me now she's a senior staff attorney at the center for constitutional rights hi there now we've just gotten word back from the joint task force at guantanamo bay in regards to the allegations they said quote the recent allegations by detainees that conditions that get my have deteriorated are patently false the joint task force takes its

duty to treat detainees humanely very seriously and seeks to ensure we conduct ourselves in accordance with the highest standards and we remain under current continual scrutiny oversight and inspection so what do you have to say to that. what we have heard well first of all the allegation that we're making is a specific one it is that we have heard from every attorney who has visited the base or communicated with their clients in some fashion since february that there is a large scale hunger strike going on at guantanamo that affects most of the men there the trigger was what we have heard is that it was in response to searches of the men's korans and that is what we've heard and that's what we've reported so it is. you know there is a specific there are specific reports that we're making that have been corroborated consistently by every single person who has had communique with their client in some form some of those attorneys have been down and seen the evidence of the

physical impact themselves in terms of loss of weight of twenty to thirty or forty pounds let me ask you how grave is the situation there how much longer can these men really last before they are in serious physical of trouble. well at this point the strike has been going on for nearly forty day and what we know from standards by the world medical association for example is that by a day forty two or forty five you start seeing serious physical effects like loss of hearing loss of vision and ultimately death can result so what we're reporting is is based on extreme concern about what will happen if the strike continues and denials by the authorities at this point are frankly not surprising they have denied allegations like this before there have been hunger strikes at guantanamo before that they have downplayed or denied the severity of so this is not actually that surprising but it is extremely dangerous and irresponsible and at

this point we need to hear more from the office already and that there is that all is fine at guantanamo obviously of obviously there's a lot of this information coming out and it's hard to really know what the truth is to because a lot of people are not allowed in there. it's very very much close mouths when it comes to these detainees in their conditions no i do want to ask you what are these men wanting what what would in this hunger strike or at the minimum stop them from from harming their bodies any more well what they have told us is that they want to surance is that searches of the korans will not happen again or in the alternative they're even willing to turn in their korans to prevent searches in the future ultimately fo the way to the way to guarantee that congress strikes don't occur at guantanamo used is to close the prison so that is the bottom line and i think there are protests now can't be divorced from the broader context of eleven and a half years of detention of men without charge and that's another question i was

going to to ask you is that there are a lot of these men have actually been cleared for release and they're still not they still haven't actually seen that release no a lot of people see these people in guantanamo bay as evil and actually trying to harm the interests of the united states it's hard to argue that all of them are trying to do that but there certainly are some of them can you explain why these men haven't been released and are any of them part of this of this hunger strike. well as you said there are one hundred sixty six men who currently remain detained at guantanamo eighty six of them so more than half of them have been cleared by the obama administration to leave the prison and what that means is that every government agency with a stake in the issue has determined unanimously that those people do not belong at guantanamo the reasons why they remain are because of a continuing moratorium on all transfers of yemeni men back to their home country

that moratorium has nothing to do with the individual facts or circumstances of those people it has to do with a blanket ban on repatriations because of their country of origin and there are also restrictions that congress has now set up that make it very difficult to effect transfers but that said if there were political will by president obama and he is serious about keeping his commitment to close the prison it is not impossible to start transferring that home it's. hard to believe that the people that are clear to go home are trying to strike just to be able to have their grand party secure bryce from the center of constitutional rights thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me well it's a simple yes or no answer and yet the cia refuses to comment on one of the most basic questions about the u.s. drone program the question of whether or not the agency possesses any information whatsoever on drone strikes so to be clear the a.c.l.u. is fighting the cia just to know if such documents exist and what kinds of records

they are but not actually physically acquire them but even that has cia officials on the defense the u.s. court of appeals doesn't agree about oh they unanimously ruled that the agency does not have the right to guard this information the judges did not rule that any specific documents must be made public by the cia but in this case at least it's a step forward for people seeking more information about the secretive program. don't mess with texas that's the message state lawmakers are saying to drone companies representative lance goodenough recently proposed house bill nine one two that would ban unmanned aerial vehicles from flying in the states airspace supporters of the bill say it's a matter of personal privacy but the true reasons for the bill might be a little more dubious than that join me now to discuss this story our to correspondent ramon galindo hey there are mona advocates say that this will protect the public's privacy but at a time when the u.a.e.

views are becoming more and more commonplace how likely is this to pass. the texas privacy could be the toughest anti drone law in the united states no the author of h.b. nine twelve state representative good in there in texas has advocated for privacy rights and has sold this bill as anti police state so it's got the support of civil libertarians and surprisingly enough it has gone support from legislators on the other side of the aisle democrats who see that their constituents are also concerned about privacy so it actually has done quite a bit of support it's out of the legislature there in texas right now it's only in a house committee so it's still a few steps away before becomes law now we're going on the other hand there's a lot of criticism about this bill criticism that says that this bill will stop i want more than just runs can't can you explain. that's right well researchers at the university of texas including todd humphrey at the engineering department are

worried that this law is too broad and that it's going to catch up people who are not inadvertently peeping toms it's lumping them in with these peeping toms and he points out that he has he met u.t. they they use drones for research there's no journalists who are using drones for their own investigative work so he worries that a lot of these people who are using these drone technology for legitimate purposes are going to be lumped in with these peeping toms who are inadvertently taking pictures or video of people on their own property now ramona as i mentioned a little bit earlier there might be a little bit more dubious reasons for why this this bill actually came to being i know one example of how drones are actually acting as a public service was a case actually in texas a few months ago where a hobbyist spotted a stream flowing of blood can you go into a little bit more detail about this. right well capturing images and this includes

all sort of data not just video and pictures but also sound and even odors under this law capturing all these sort of data with a drone would be illegal but there is a case where a guy who just likes to go out and fly drones over nice areas and take pictures he accidentally captured. a meat packing plant which was dumping blood into a river and the owners of that plant are facing federal indictment so in this case drone technology is actually serving the public good but there's a section in this new bill which is being proposed which would make that sort of evidence not usable in a court of law so in that instance people think that there might be some ulterior motives to putting this law into effect right now and i know that critics are saying that lawmakers in this case would be trying to protect some kind of corporate interests but i do want to show the other cities and states that are there are actually following texas' footsteps as you can see here and drawn laws have already passed in tallahassee and charlottesville meanwhile california

massachusetts illinois texas washington kentucky and oregon are all considering similar legislation are we starting to see a trend here well known well definitely and i just want to add that under the proposed texas ban police would still be able to use drones for search warrants and d.h. is would still be able to use drones along the border but as we saw recently with rand paul and his drone filibuster and these laws that were seen in across the u.s. there's definitely a lot more knowledge meant to the privacy issues and the safety issues that drones bring along with them and we do know that i'm actually there's been a lot of times that texas was in the news the most recent one was the last year group of researchers from the university of texas at austin actually proved that to the d.n.a. test that they could take control of an unmanned aerial vehicle and that just raises so many more questions about the way the program. and you know i can understand i'm sure others can understand why there's

a lot of criticism and also questions about the good and parm that this kind of legislation can do ramon glinda r t correspondent reporting from l.a. for us thank you so much for mon. and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we cover today go to youtube dot com slash r t america there you'll find all of our latest videos we upload all of our segments so if you missed any part of the show or any other show you can always find all of our segments there and for the latest information on the stories we've covered and a few that we just didn't have time to get to check out our web site that's our team dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez i want to know what stories you want us to cover so tweet me at meghan underscore lopez now make sure you stick around for the five pm show r.t. correspondent liz wahl was at a luncheon where a whistleblower thomas drake was telling about telling a crowd during sunshine week all about the problems that he's space so stick around

you won't want to miss it. technology. developments around. the future. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. a potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but

what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more patrie down the line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. decent it is going to be pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of in life you'll be slugged three drug listen some emergency vehicles are exceptional. leadership car dijon faces freedom choice. and. they're ready to clean up a new sort of. i'm bringing you liberty anytime. soon.